TAMPA, Fla. — UConn guard Azzi Fudd dribbled to her left toward the top of the key with just over two minutes remaining in the first quarter of Friday’s national semifinal against UCLA. Her teammate Sarah Strong stepped out of the lane to set a ball screen on UCLA’s Kiki Rice. It left Fudd with a crystal-clear look at the basket. Fudd stepped back behind the 3-point line, bent her knees and let the ball fly toward the rim.

Some 25 feet later, it smacked the backboard and fell through the net.

Fudd looked right, toward the wing where Paige Bueckers stood, her eyes silently communicating both her surprise and delight.

“I was like, ‘Oh that was ugly,'” Fudd said. “But, you know, make your misses. The bank was open for a minute, so I took advantage.”

After missing her first nine shots against USC in the Elite Eight, Fudd got out to a hot start in the national semifinals, scoring all 19 of her points in the first half to help UConn pull away from UCLA and advance to a championship showdown against South Carolina on Sunday.

“I could tell right away,” UConn coach Geno Auriemma said Friday night. “I saw the way she was warming up a little bit, and you could tell it was just a different vibe.”

The Gamecocks know how dangerous Fudd can be. The last time the teams played, on Feb. 16, Fudd scored 28 points and shot 60% from beyond the arc in UConn’s 87-58 win. The Huskies are 25-1 when Fudd scores at least 15 points, including 22 consecutive wins.

Fudd also has stepped up her defense this season, particularly during the tournament. She notched three steals against UCLA and also had three against Oklahoma in the third round.

The Huskies have the incomparable Bueckers and a superstar in the making in Strong. But to win their 12th NCAA championship and their first since 2016, the Huskies will need this version of Fudd: the silky-smooth shooter and defensive competitor.

THE PUREST SHOT in women’s basketball was built years ago in Virginia. To get her quick, snappy release, Fudd’s parents, Katie and Tim, bounced or tossed countless balls to her when she was a kid. She’d catch and go right up with it. As she progressed in skill, Katie and Tim made the passes a little funkier. They’d come in high or wide. Each time, Fudd would catch the ball and bring it to what Katie calls the “set point” and launch it to the basket.

Look closely when Fudd catches the ball and you’ll see her spin it in her hands as she prepares to go up. “I turn the ball so the lines are on my hands, and when I shoot it’s at least somewhat of a spiral,” Fudd said.

When Fudd was in late elementary school, Katie, who played at NC State and Georgetown, adjusted her daughter’s shot to the one that has become one of college basketball’s most fearsome. “That was a whole summer of basically giving me a ‘big-girl shot,'” Fudd said.

The big shift was relocating Fudd’s release point. Originally, Fudd shot the ball lower on her shoulder. The reset brought her set point up about four inches to where it is now, which locates the ball just above her shoulder. The reason for moving the set point was so Fudd could develop a true jump shot.

When Fudd got to high school, she started taking trips to South Carolina to work out with Stephen Curry’s trainer, Brandon Payne. He noticed right away that she had a “good base.” Her balance was strong; her feet were already aligned when she shot. But Payne wanted her to be even more aware of her arches and her toes.

“The first time I was [in South Carolina], he was talking about toes and I’m like, ‘What do my toes have to do with this?'” Fudd said.

Allow Curry to explain.

“She gets pretty good lift on her jump shot compared to even me,” Curry told ESPN in 2023. “I’m more kind of a toe-dominant shooter. Klay Thompson’s more of a jump shooter like Azzi. But the balance is key just because you have to feel rooted into the ground to keep going to get lift, to get power.”

Once the ball is in Fudd’s pocket, she focuses on keeping her wrist pointed at the rim. Her elbow sticks out just a bit. With her right wrist cocked and the inside pointing toward the front of the rim, her left hand sits on the ball as a guide. Her left thumb doesn’t sneak over to try to add some extra power.

When Fudd releases the ball, she does so with a natural forward flick of her wrist. She doesn’t snap her wrist harshly down into a tight gooseneck. Her follow-through was designed to be soft. “The ball’s sensitive; it feels that,” Katie Fudd said. “So if you’re real stressed and aggressive with your fingers, the ball’s not going to naturally rotate.”

When Fudd follows through, it’s smooth.

“It’s kind of like a shooter’s heaven when you watch that,” Curry said. “I kind of get jealous about it, because it looks prettier than mine.”

But sometimes having a pretty shot isn’t enough to get it to drop through the hoop.

THE FIRST MISS was a contested, leaning jumper in the lane that bounced off the backboard before glancing the rim. The second miss was a pull-up jumper that popped off the front of the rim. The third miss was a 3-point shot that bounced off the front rim and grazed the backboard before dropping into a rebounder’s outstretched hands. In the Elite Eight against USC in Spokane, Washington, Fudd missed her first nine shots.

During the break before the fourth quarter, Auriemma drew up UConn’s first offensive possession. The Huskies were up 51-46, and this first play was supposed to set the tone. It was an elevator screen for Fudd. She hadn’t hit a shot all game, and for just a split second, he wondered if maybe the screen should be for Bueckers instead.

Fudd was a bit skeptical too. “For a second I was like, ‘Why?'” she said.

But Auriemma stuck to the plan, and Fudd accepted the plan. Her teammates told her this was the one.

With the ball in Bueckers’ hands, Fudd ran up the lane between Strong and Aubrey Griffin. Strong and Griffin stepped together to close the “elevator doors” and set the screen. USC’s Avery Howell tried to get through as Fudd caught the ball a step behind the 3-point line. Fudd set her feet and launched the ball toward the rim. It swirled through the net to give UConn an eight-point lead.

“After having missed all of the other ones, that was a big shot by her,” Auriemma said after the game. “And then another one. And so, took a hunch, and ran with it. And it was big. Really big.”

FRIDAY’S NATIONAL SEMIFINAL against UCLA had just tipped off, and Fudd sat down in her defensive stance, guarding Londynn Jones. She fought over the top of a ball screen to disrupt a pass from Jones to one of her teammates. The ball bounced back to Fudd, who turned up the court. She pushed the ball out in front of her and attacked the basket. The ball almost got away from her, but she corralled it on the jump stop and laid it in for the first points of the game.

Auriemma challenged Fudd to be better at defense over the summer. One of the reasons she improved is because she’s leaning on a core part of her offensive prowess: her feet.

“Knowing how to use my feet and not getting outside myself definitely helps defensively,” Fudd said.

On the season, Fudd averaged 1.3 steals per game. In the nine games since the calendar turned to March, she has averaged 2.5, including a season-high six against Arkansas State in the first round of the NCAA tournament. She also had season highs in blocks (two) and assists (seven) that day.

“The more you do other than shoot the ball, the better success you have shooting it,” Auriemma said. “Because when all you do is just shoot and you don’t do anything else, that’s always on your mind, and you are obsessed with it, and if it doesn’t go your way, you make things worse.

“We’re not quite ready to put ‘the most all-around player in the history of UConn’ next to her name just quite yet, but we’re working on it. We’re working on it.”

WHEN SHE’S NOT on the basketball court, Fudd wears two bracelets on her wrist. One says “purpose,” and the other says “resilient.” Since winning the Gatorade National Player of the Year as a sophomore in high school, Fudd has suffered two ACL tears in her right knee, a meniscus strain in that same knee and an unspecified foot injury. She has played in 33 of UConn’s 39 games this season. In her previous three seasons, she played in 42 games total.

Prior to the stat-stuffing win over Arkansas State, it had been 728 days since Fudd last played in the NCAA tournament.

In December, she sprained her right knee against Louisville. Doubt and fear crept into her mind. “I feel like that doubt festered a little longer than it ever has before,” Fudd said. “That’s where it got difficult.”

She missed the next three games, including a loss to Notre Dame. She returned on Dec. 21 against USC, but she went scoreless in eight minutes on the court.

On Jan. 8 against Xavier, she scored 23 points. She had a season-high 34 against St. John’s on Feb. 12 before unleashing 28 on South Carolina. She announced after UConn advanced to the Sweet 16 that she would return for a fifth season in Storrs.

Heading into the showdown against the Gamecocks for the national championship, that resilience will be key. But Fudd knows that if her shot isn’t falling, her teammates and coaches still believe.

“We know,” Bueckers said, “nothing beats Azzi.”

On Sunday, Fudd is determined to prove — whether with her exquisite shot or her newfound defense — that nothing beats UConn, either.

“We’ve been through so much,” she said. “Just to be here is incredible. We’re not done. We’re not settling.”